The Fast Track Test: Alton Towers Scarefest
Three paid Fast Tracks for £25, one free Platinum skip and two Single Rider queues. On a Scarefest Sunday, which bought us back the most time?
Read time: 8 mins
Scarefest is a night-time event that shuts at 9pm, roughly the hour most frightening things are getting started. That leaves a short stretch after sunset for the night rides, the scare zones, the entertainment and something to eat, and every 60-minute board takes a large bite out of it.
So we tested queue-skipping three ways. Gold and Platinum Merlin Annual Passholders can currently buy a Fast Track package of three rides for £25, with The Smiler and Wicker Man among the options. Platinum passholders also get one free one-shot Fast Track per visit, which we spent on TH13TEEN. And since it costs nothing at all, we tried Single Rider too.
Need To Know
- Product and price: Scarefest passholder Fast Track, £25 per person for three rides. Gold and Platinum Merlin Annual Passholders only.
- The day: A Sunday in early October during Scarefest, with a 9pm close.
- Time saved: 2 hours 17 minutes across the three paid rides (The Smiler, Nemesis Reborn and Wicker Man), or 2 hours 52 with the free Platinum one-shot on TH13TEEN. Two Single Rider queues saved about 25 minutes.
- Verdict: Worth It, at £10.95 per hour of advertised queue time saved.
The verdict, up front
WORTH IT. £10.95 per hour of queuing saved.
Worth Every Penny · Worth It · Depends on the Day · Hard to Justify · Not Worth It
£25 bought back 2 hours 17 minutes of advertised queuing. That puts the package at the good end of the Worth It band, 95p an hour short of Worth Every Penny, and the free Platinum skip added another 35 minutes on top. The free alternative managed rather less, with two Single Rider queues saving 25 minutes between them. On a Scarefest evening, Fast Track bought back our night.
How we worked it out
Same method as our Chessington test. For each ride, time saved is the posted standby wait when we joined, minus how long we actually waited, so a 60-minute board and a five-minute wait counts as 55 minutes saved. Posted waits can be generous, out of date or plain fiction, but they’re the fiction you have to decide on.
One sum is kept separate. We paid £25 for three Fast Tracks and the fourth came free with a Platinum pass, so TH13TEEN is left out of the £10.95 figure.
The day, ride by ride
Oblivion · Single Rider – The first attempt to beat the queue cost nothing. We joined at 13:30 and boarded at about 13:55. Twenty-five minutes waiting for a spare seat on Oblivion. Everyone else, it turned out, had brought a friend. Single Rider only fills the seats that groups leave empty, so when there aren’t many, you wait.
Board 40 min → Single Rider 25 min → 15 saved
The Smiler · Fast Track – In at 14:25, riding at 14:28, with an hour showing on the standby board. It was the best result of the day by some distance, and it gets its own section further down.
Board 60 min → Fast Track 3 min → 57 saved
Spinball Whizzer · Single Rider – The second free attempt was messier. We joined at 14:44 and boarded at 15:14, but the ride kept stopping while we waited, with cars apparently struggling to line up as they came back into the station. Some of that half hour belongs to the ride, so treat the figure with care. Single Rider can skip people. It can’t skip a ride that keeps stopping.
Board 40 min → Single Rider 30 min → 10 saved
Nemesis Reborn · Fast Track – In at 17:30, riding by 17:35. A tidy half hour saved, although with hindsight this was the skip we needed least. We went back for a night ride just before the park closed and waited 15 minutes in the standard queue. It’s worth doing twice, because the lighting around the ride gives it a different character after dark.
Board 35 min → Fast Track 5 min → 30 saved
Wicker Man · Fast Track – In at 17:53, riding at about 18:03. Fifty minutes is the second-best return of the day, and we managed to get the timing wrong anyway. The fire, smoke and lit-up structure make Wicker Man one of the best night rides at Alton Towers, and we rode it in daylight. After dark the queue was very long, and by then our Fast Track was spent.
Board 60 min → Fast Track 10 min → 50 saved
TH13TEEN · Platinum Fast Track – The free one-shot, used at 19:18 and riding by 19:23. This is the one we timed properly. TH13TEEN’s woodland setting works far better when you can’t see where the track is heading, and by quarter past seven you can’t. It cost nothing extra on the day and sits outside the £25 sum.
Board 40 min → Fast Track 5 min → 35 saved
The tally
| Queue-skip | Rides | Cost on the day | Boards said (min) | We waited (min) | Saved (min) | Wait removed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid Fast Track | 3 | £25 | 155 | 18 | 137 (2 hrs 17) | 88% |
| Paid plus free Platinum skip | 4 | £25 | 195 | 23 | 172 (2 hrs 52) | 88% |
| Single Rider | 2 | Free | 80 | 55 | 25 | 31% |
The three paid skips work out at £10.95 per hour saved. Count the free Platinum skip as well and it comes to £8.72 an hour, which would tip into Worth Every Penny, but a Platinum pass costs rather more than nothing, so the paid figure is the verdict.
The four skips together saved 2 hours 52 minutes. Exactly the total we logged at Chessington. We’d like to claim that’s rigour. It’s a coincidence.
Single Rider’s 31% needs handling with care. Two queues is a tiny sample and Spinball’s stoppages dragged the number down, so it may well do better on another day. We wouldn’t plan a busy one around it.
The Walk-On Moment
The Smiler, 57 minutes saved. The board said an hour, and we were in our seats three minutes after walking into the Fast Track entrance. A one-hour advertised wait became a walk-on, with none of the usual arguing over whether ten minutes off a moderate queue was worth the money. On a Scarefest Sunday, that’s nearly an hour freed up for mazes, food and scare zones later on.
Why Fast Track matters more at Scarefest
Time gets more expensive once the sun goes down. In daylight you have hours in hand. After dark you’re trying to fit Dark Hollow, Burial Grounds, Symphony of the Towers and the night rides into what’s left before a 9pm close, which we’ve already argued should be 10pm. At that point a 60-minute queue costs a large slice of the best part of the event.
That’s where the £25 earned its money. The Smiler, Nemesis Reborn and Wicker Man were all ridden by just after six, so none of them needed an hour of our evening. The dark was left for the scare zones, TH13TEEN and a second go on Nemesis.
When should you use Fast Track at Alton Towers?
- Spend it on the biggest boards. The Smiler and Wicker Man saved 107 minutes between them. If a ride is showing 15 or 20 minutes, keep the skip in your pocket.
- Save your Wicker Man Fast Track for after dark. It’s the ride that gains most from the darkness, and its queue was very long once the sun had gone. We used ours at 17:53 and wished we hadn’t.
- Nemesis Reborn may not need one late on. Just before closing we waited 15 minutes in the standard queue.
- Treat Single Rider as a bonus. It’s free and worth a look, but on this visit it saved 25 minutes where Fast Track saved hours.
What if you’re not a passholder?
This is not a test of Alton Towers’ standard Fast Track packages. The £25 deal is a Scarefest offer for Gold and Platinum Merlin Annual Passholders. Essential passholders get the usual 10% Fast Track discount instead, and day guests buy the standard packages at standard prices. If that’s you, the £10.95 figure doesn’t carry over, because a different price gives a different answer. For Gold and Platinum holders it’s a very good deal, and for Platinum holders with the free one-shot it’s better.
Conclusion
Worth It. Three paid skips saved 2 hours 17 minutes for £25, or £10.95 per hour, and the free Platinum skip on TH13TEEN took the total to 2 hours 52. Single Rider cost nothing and saved about 25 minutes, which makes it a useful extra and a poor plan.
We’d do one thing differently and keep the Wicker Man skip for after dark. Otherwise the package did what we paid for. The big rides were done by early evening, and the rest of the night went on Scarefest rather than on watching the clock from inside another queue. At Chessington, Fast Track bought back our afternoon. At Alton Towers Scarefest, it bought back our night.
